


Let's Do the Same as They

by halotolerant



Category: Captain America (Movies), Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Genre: 1940s, Bisexuality, Crossover, Multi, Pre-Poly, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21836287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: It's 1944, and in a particular US Army base in Holland, there's a very special USO performance
Relationships: Cosmo Brown/Don Lockwood/Kathy Selden, James "Bucky" Barnes/Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 64
Kudos: 493
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Let's Do the Same as They

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allyndra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyndra/gifts).



> Hi allyndra, Happy Yuletide! I was inspired by your request for 'outsider POV' and your preference for 'crossover/fusion' and landed on this one

‘Wishing you could be up there again, huh Stevie?’

Embarrassed, Steve turns. He’s standing near the back of the crowd of GIs assembled here in the open air, in the mud, 'round the makeshift USO stage, and like everyone else he’s been hypnotised by the performance. He realises now how his foot has been tapping along.

‘Still wished I coulda seen that,’ Bucky adds, grinning, and comes to stand next to him. ‘You musta been a sight in tights.’ His eyes travel up Steve’s body, and then down, hamming it up like he always does. But Bucky would make love to a lamppost, to a pillar-box; that’s what Steve tells himself. He’s a guy with so much affection to give that he doesn’t necessarily mean much by it.

Stifling an uneasy chuckle, Steve draws his arms around himself a little tighter, and turns back to focus on the stage again. The barnstorming opening number of this afternoon’s show is reaching a crescendo, with no regard to the grey of the day, or the light drizzle falling.

How these two men are executing the dance moves they are, _and_ playing the fiddle, _and_ still able to sing loud enough to reach all the way back to where he’s standing, Steve can’t imagine. There’s a phantom, asthmatic tightness in his chest just thinking about it.

Their tune is upbeat and eager and happy, and everything the troops stationed here in Holland must need after all these cold months of trying to push the Allied advance eastwards. Steve and the Howling Commandos just dropped in here three days ago, completed their mission yesterday and are now waiting for this bad weather to clear to allow their airlift to the next Hydra target, miles away in another country. They don’t eat and breathe and bleed this frontline. Since D-Day these men have been fighting for every inch of rock and blade of grass and acre of mud, hanging in by their fingernails.

And yet the mood here right now is joyous, almost giddy; onstage the two men twist and tap like the world is just wonderful. And it’s a song about love after all, and Steve supposes that’s how love’s meant to feel. Like something even more empowering than an Erskine serum. Not like being torn in half.

_‘Fit as a fiddle and ready for love! I can jump over the moon up above! Fit as a fiddle and ready for love! Haven’t a worry, I haven’t a care, fit as a fiddle and floating on air! Fit as a fiddle and ready for love!’_

‘Some tricks they got,’ Bucky murmurs, watching, and gives a low whistle. ‘And they’re not so young either. Heck, Don Lockwood was putting movies out back when my parents were courting. Ma had that _Royal Rascal_ cover from People Magazine up next to the stove for years.’

Steve remembers it well, remembers sitting in that tiny kitchen and staring at that picture, before and after he’d lost his Ma and moved in with the Barnes’. Don Lockwood had been there on the wall like the Virgin Mary or St Peter had been in Steve’s house, and Steve had kind of forgotten he was also a real person.

When the routine ends, there’s a roar of applause from the crowd. Steve joins in, and hears Bucky whooping.

On the stage, Lockwood takes a bow, and gestures to the other guy to come with him to the microphone at the front. They’re dressed in bright v-neck sweaters and checked slacks, and both breathing hard, but by no means winded.

‘Say fellas,’ Lockwood begins, ‘I just gotta say that it’s a real pleasure, a real honour to be here with you all today. My name’s Don Lockwood, maybe you’ve seen a movie of mine?’

There’s another round of cheering.

‘This guy could give Howard Stark a run for his money,’ Bucky remarks. ‘Actually, I betcha that’s what Stark models it on, that whole shtick he does on stage.’

‘And if you’ve seen a movie of mine in the last twenty years,’ Lockwood is continuing, ‘then you’ve also seen a movie brought to you by this guy, my old pal Cosmo Brown, long time head of music at Monumental Pictures!’

The other man grins at Lockwood, turns to the audience to bow and then leans in to the mic to speak too: ‘What Don isn’t saying is that he’s starred in over forty pictures, but I’ve composed for maybe ninety-five, so forget all the billboards you’ve seen with him selling you toothpaste, I’m the more famous of the two of us, the only difference being that no one’s ever heard of me.’

As the laugh rolls, Lockwood leaps back in. ‘You know if there’s one thing I’m grateful to old Adolf for, and Benito and Francisco and Hirohito and that whole gang of clowns, it’s getting Cosmo back on the road with me. Once upon a time, he and I were the toast of every music hall in every state in America. I guess that was before half of you were born, but there used to be these things called theatres and you went to them to hear people sing, and I guess occasionally get a custard pie in the kisser.’

‘Ah yes,’ Brown grins at Lockwood. ‘Our storied dance concert tour of the finest symphonic halls in the country.’

Since the serum, Steve’s had perfect vision. He can see, now, the sheer joyous energy of the smile that passes between Lockwood and Brown as they look at each other. There are hundreds of GIs watching them, it’s several degrees below any kind of comfortable temperature, and you can hear the sound of ordnance over the hills from where the Axis is trying to push back the liberation of Europe. And yet these men seem to be able to take a moment in which only the two of them exist.

Steve shoots a glance sideways. Bucky is watching them too.

Steve puts a hand in his pocket, feels for the compass with Agent Carter’s picture out of habit. Then he stops himself, and folds his arms again.

‘Anyway, Cosmo, if we’re honest with ourselves, these gentlemen didn’t come to see either of us,’ Lockwood is saying now. He turns once more to the audience, his hands raised theatrically. ‘They came to see the one, the only, the unbeatable, unbelievable Kathy Selden!’

The crowd roars once more, feet stamping on the icy ground, and Lockwood and Brown go to either side of the stage. The makeshift backdrop of stars and stripes parts, revealing a beautiful woman in a stunning royal blue dress that hugs her curves down to just past her knees. She’s treading the rough boards in velvet high heels. Her shoulders are bare; she’s got to be freezing, but she’s still smiling as she walks out.

And if her look is something from a world half the men here may never have known, her smile is like a slice of something you’d forgotten you ever had. Steve can hear it all perfectly too, the gasp from the assembled men. It’s not just one emotion – she’s gorgeous, but the way she holds her arms out to them isn’t just about that, and that’s not all these men want from her either.

But it’s Lockwood and Brown who go to her, meeting her at the microphone in the middle of the stage.

‘Hey boys,’ she says, and kisses them on the cheek, one and then the other.

Steve can’t help wondering if she’s seen the way these two men look at each other. Can she not know? But now he’s watching both of them look at her, and he’s blinking, confused.

‘You remember seeing her that time on Broadway?’ Bucky is murmuring, cutting through Steve’s thoughts. ‘In _Everything Elaine!_ , that year my Ma won the raffle?’

‘She was something,’ Steve agrees.

‘She was something as Lady Macbeth too,’ a voice says behind them, and Steve turns.

‘Agent Carter!’ he exclaims. ‘We weren’t expecting to see you till the next furlough in London!’

‘Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes,’ Agent Carter smiles at both of them. As she has to, Steve reminds himself. She’s being professional; their unit’s successes are her successes.

‘How you been?’ Bucky asks her. ‘Keeping those stuffed-shirts at SSR HQ in line?’

Steve is never going to understand how Bucky knows what to say to women. Not that he’s not grateful – after the incident where the blonde staffer kissed Steve in London, he knows that it was Bucky who explained it to Agent Carter so that she’s not mad at Steve anymore.

Steve could have kissed Bucky for that. And isn’t that just the problem?

Since then, since whatever conversation they had, Agent Carter’s undoubtedly warmed to Bucky too. And that’s… Steve sometimes thinks that if he were a better person, he wouldn’t have a problem with that.

‘Well some of the shirts made it out here, so I’ve just been arguing with them in the command tent,’ Agent Carter explains, sighing. ‘I suppose from a viewpoint of absolute deployment efficiency, it all could have gone into coded dispatches, but I couldn’t miss Kathy Selden. So I drove over in a jeep from somewhere near Liège. Set off at five in the Ack Emma, thank heavens for American coffee supplies.’

‘So you’re here just for her, no one else?’ Bucky pushes, and Steve can’t help tensing up.

But Agent Carter just raises her eyebrow, a hint of a smile round her mouth, and turns to look over at the stage.

Steve looks too, and sees that Selden is now standing alone.

‘Friends,’ Selden is saying and her voice is soft and warm, a lovely slow-paced tone to it. ‘I want to sing you a song that means a lot to me. I know you all have loved ones back home, maybe your Mom or your Dad, maybe a special someone you’re keeping a promise to, and I want you to think that if they could, they’d sing this for you now with me.’

When she starts up with a tune Steve recognises as _You are my lucky star_ , he can’t at first figure out where the violin music is coming from, and then realises that Lockwood and Brown are both playing their fiddles from the first number again, this time from the wings. They’re both playing from memory, just like they were in their routine, and they’re both watching her as they play. Steve has always thought of this a sweet song, but here, now, there’s something almost haunting about the melody.

Who among the men here is going to be lucky?

After the wistful, even melancholy atmosphere that’s descended during Selden’s song, she turns them all around again just like that with a wide grin and _Kansas City_ from _Oklahoma!_ , which takes a highly appreciated turn when she starts on the lines about the ‘gal’ who was _‘as round above as she was round below…’,_ hand gestures included.

Although he stares very firmly forwards, Steve knows his ears are going red. He can’t see Agent Carter or Bucky’s expressions, but feels almost certain they’re just smiling, maybe even looking at each other, grinning.

‘I saw her in London, in the West End, must have been 1935 or ‘36,’ he hears Agent Carter say from behind him now. ‘It was a school trip actually; a whole gaggle of us went to help us with our School Certificate. Can’t be an English schoolchild and not study The Bard. Quite a few girls had serious crushes on her.’

Bucky chuckles. ‘Crushes that never ended?’

‘Sergeant Barnes, look at her!’ she protests.

‘Point taken. You know, the view’s pretty fine in this direction too.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Agent Carter agrees with him, after just a moment’s hesitation.

Steve forces himself not to turn round. If this is how it’s going to play out then maybe that’s for the best. Perhaps if he were truly unselfish it’s what he’d want for both of them. They are the two best people he knows. And it’s not like he’s ever managed to tell either of them what he feels – how can he, when he has two people he wants to say it to? All kinds of crazy things are possible in this world – he’s living proof - but not that.

On stage, the songs ended, Lockwood and Brown bound back on alongside Selden, and kiss her again. The three of them whisper something together.

Squinting isn’t going to make his vision any clearer, but Steve does it anyway out of habit; he still can’t figure out what he’s seeing.

‘We weren’t planning on doing this number today,’ Lockwood announces as their little meeting breaks up, rubbing his hands together. ‘But hey, the big fella upstairs is clearly putting in a request.’ And he looks up at the cloudy sky.

Brown leans in beside him again – they’re crammed close by the mic with Selden, and Brown just drapes himself over Lockwood’s torso to keep his balance. ‘I gotta say, I thought the first time I got some divine communication it would be about something else maybe.’

An appreciative belly laugh goes through the audience, and before it’s even finished the three of them are lining up, marching on the spot.

 _‘I’m singin’ in the rain, just singin’ in the rain! What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again!’_ they chorus, arms linked, and even through this persistent drizzle, they seem to truly feel it. Brown gestures at the audience, encouraging, and soon the men are linking arms and singing too, rejoicing in it.

It’s a few numbers later that a messenger runs up to Steve’s side, salutes, and passes him a note. Steve opens it at once.

‘We need to mobilise?’ Bucky asks, tone serious, the tension changed through his body in an instant.

‘I only wish,’ Steve murmurs. He holds out the note so both Bucky and Agent Carter can see it too.

‘ _Delighted to hear you’re in the same neck of the woods as us, Captain Rogers,’_ Bucky reads aloud. ‘ _If you’re free after the show, we’d love to stand you a drink and meet ‘The Star Spangled Man’ properly after all this time. And we might have an idea for a new number, or maybe something even better! Yours sincerely, Don Lockwood._ I don’t get it, what does he mean?’

Steve can only shrug, but Agent Carter laughs: ‘Didn’t you ever read your own promotional materials? They wrote your song!’

‘What?’

‘You know: _The Star Spangled Man with a Plan_? That was a Lockwood/Brown/Selden number. Senator Brandt wanted only the best for his promotional tour. And I can’t say I loved it at the time but you have to admit it was catchy enough.’

‘Damn I wished I coulda seen that,’ Bucky mutters again, shaking his head. Then he looks up. ‘Hey, if they say ‘a new number’ does that mean they’re trying to get Stevie here back on the showpony circuit again?’

‘I doubt it,’ Agent Carter says, but she’s frowning, and that puts a twinge of fear down Steve’s spine that he’s never felt with a hundred Hydra agents on his tail. ‘But I don’t really know what they mean. If it is about something for the wider public, I probably ought to come along on behalf of SSR.’

‘And if we’re meeting movie stars, I ought to come along on account of I want to,’ Bucky adds.

Steve swallows. ‘So you think I should meet with them?’

Agent Carter and Bucky have the same expression on their faces when he looks up at them.

-

And so an hour later the three of them are outside the larger of the tents that the USO has set up near the stage. Steve remembers these tents from his own days on tour – about twenty-five feet by twelve, just enough room to get in some modesty screens and a washbasin set and a rickety table for trays of coffee. He’d used to offer to change in the latrines, let the girls have the run of the space and get rid of the screens altogether. Even then there’d never been enough room.

‘They might not be ready for us yet,’ he says now. Agent Carter rolls her eyes.

‘Hello? Mr Lockwood?’ she calls out, and Bucky snorts, and then straightens up when a familiar face with a six thousand megawatt smile pokes through the tent flaps.

‘Well hey there! So great you could make it!’ Lockwood has changed into army fatigues, which is usual practice for USO performers when not onstage, and there’s a towel round his neck, but his hair has been Brilliantined down into precisely the perfect style Steve remembers from that photo in Mrs Barnes’ kitchenette.

‘Pleasure to meet you all,’ Lockwood continues. ‘Now, you must be Captain Rogers, I recognise you from your posters.’

‘Uh, likewise sir,’ Steve says, and puts his hand out. Then he tries to collect his manners. ‘This is Agent Peggy Carter, of the Strategic Scientific Reserve.’

‘Agent Carter! A pleasure.’

‘And this is Sergeant Barnes, he’s…’

‘A big fan,’ Bucky cuts in, and grins, and gets a warm handshake of his own. Lockwood pauses half way through and points at him, ‘Hey, you’re the long time pal aren’t you? James Barnes? The guy he grew up with? You’ll be interested in this pitch too. Well come right on in, all of you.’ And Lockwood holds the flap aside, beckoning, and they step through into an atmosphere Steve recognises too – the scent of damp canvas and sweat overlaid with face powder and perfume, and the rich, oily aroma of mascara.

His eyes are instantly drawn to the riot of colour that the costumes from the day’s performance make, on their racks at the end of the tent and strewn over the sides of the familiar dressing screens.

‘Oh my gosh, Don, you could have waited to let them in until I’d finished my makeup!’ a female voice suddenly protests from behind one of them, causing Steve to flinch as he startles.

‘You look beautiful either way, darling!’ Lockwood protests, giving no show of concern, gesturing Steve and the others to take one of the canvas-backed folding chairs that have been arranged in a circle around a camping table. And turning to greet them from another table the other end of the tent – one absolutely groaning with different bottles – is Brown.

‘Say, what are you all drinking?’ Brown asks them cheerily, once they’ve been through another round of handshakes. Both the front pockets of his fatigues have Penguin paperbacks in, a tad too tall and sticking slightly out of the top.

Steve frowns. ‘Should we get some more chairs?’ There are only four set out – obviously, they weren’t expecting him to bring two more people.

‘Don’t worry about it, they’re not any better off in the USO fixer tent, so you’ll only have to steal them from some poor staffer,’ Brown says, waving him away. ‘I don’t want to be responsible for us losing the war on account of one guy got fallen arches standing too long and forget to order more flags on pins for those maps. Don and I can perch on one of these ten steamer trunks full of Don’s hair oil, right Don?’

‘Well put a cushion down if you’re going to do that!’ the voice behind the screen – Kathy Selden, presumably - cries out, louder than Lockwood’s protests. ‘Think of his back!’

There a few seconds of chaos as they all get themselves seated and the trunk moved – there’s so little room to manoeuvre that everyone has to sit down in a specific order, and then somehow they’re all gathered around the table, with Brown pouring Agent Carter a Shirley Temple, and Steve and Bucky each a whiskey sour.

‘Where did you get the lemons?’ Agent Carter asks wistfully, watching Brown peel and twist the zest.

‘Came with us from California,’ Selden says, smiling, emerging at last to take the final chair. Whatever she’s been doing behind the screen, she looks immaculate now. She’s wearing khaki too, and Steve knows that can look well on a woman, because of Agent Carter, but where Agent Carter looks professional and pin-sharp, Selden makes the baggy overall come over like high fashion. Steve would never have believed she’d been tap-dancing not two hours earlier and then had to wash up somewhere with no running water. ‘Say, we can spare a few for Agent Carter, right boys?’

‘I thought it was limes the British liked?’

‘Don’t start,’ Agent Carter tells Brown, but she’s smiling. ‘You’re a long way from California now,’ she adds, polite small talk for which Steve is grateful as he tries to compose himself.

‘Yes, I do miss it.’ Selden sighs. ‘We have a beach house there, right on the sand so you can take a dip in the morning and dry off in the sunshine. And I worry about the cats. But of course that all seems very trivial now.’

Brown reaches over and squeezes Selden’s shoulders in a quick hug, pecking her on the cheek. Then he holds up one finger in admonition: ‘Keeping Sir Pussington Cholmondeley the Third in good fish supplies is not remotely trivial, just ask him.’

‘He’s gonna be mad with us when we get back to him, that’s for sure,’ Lockwood observes. ‘He’s bad enough when Kathy’s on tour and he’s still got two willing minions.’

Steve clears his throat, feeling awkward, and is grateful when Bucky starts speaking:

‘I can’t tell you how excited my Ma’s gonna be when I write her to say me and Stevie met you all. She might be the biggest fan you have, Mr Lockwood. She used to trade sitting the kids with my aunt just so that they could both get a shot at every new Lamont and Lockwood picture that premiered. Huh, whatever happened to Lina Lamont anyway?’

Lockwood exchanges a glance with Selden and then coughs. ‘Well, Lina, uh, she grew tired of the Hollywood life. Which was of course Hollywood’s loss. Anyway, she took up with a diction coach round that time and they moved coasts to Greenwich Village. I think it suited her.’

‘They always got plenty to say to each other, anyway,’ Brown murmurs.

‘We always get a Christmas card from Miss Dinsmore,’ Lockwood continues. ‘Last couple of years Lina even signed it too. And she’s a writer now – you know those gumshoe detective thrillers? Kent Standham? That’s her pseudonym.’ He bends and fetches a slim silver cigarette case out of his front pocket, opening it up.

‘Hey, not in front of…’ Bucky stops himself mid-sentence, holds up his hands: ‘Sorry Stevie, I keep forgetting.’

Lockwood tilts his head, clearly curious.

‘I used to have asthma. Before.’ Steve can feel himself flushing. ‘It’s not a problem now, smoke if you like.’

‘Or don’t,’ Brown says rather icily, staring at Lockwood. Selden’s frowning at him too.

‘Hey, hey, I was just gonna show this fan here my inscription,’ Lockwood holds out the open case, which only has two cigarettes in it. Engraved on the right side, is _To Donnie-wonnie, from Little Lina, Christmas 1926_

Lockwood meets Steve’s eye, sees his expression and laughs. ‘I keep it to remind me a little bit about what fame means. What it can mean. A man’s got to have a shield, Captain Rogers here knows that as much as anyone.’

Selden chuckles. ‘If it was a movie and you said a line as corny as that, then in the next scene that case would stop a bullet, and you’d realise in the third reel you had to run to Lina’s side after all.’

‘Miss Dinsmore might have something to say about that,’ Brown points out. Then he stands up. ‘Anyone’s glass empty?’

Apologetically, Steve holds his out. ‘Alcohol doesn’t affect me anymore,’ he explains. ‘I do like the taste though, if you’ve… but don’t waste another lemon on me, do give them to Agent Carter instead.’

‘We got plenty,’ Brown reassures him, and sets to it.

‘Even with all my hair oil,’ Lockwood mutters darkly; Brown quirks an eyebrow at him, smirking: ‘Don’t worry Don, whatever the price of that handsome face.’

Steve could wish the alcohol did hit him. He’s not sure quite what he’s seeing here, and it’s making him nervous, on top of the thing he’s most worried about for this meeting.

He clears his throat, sits up straight. ‘First up, I guess I should say thank you for the song. The _Star Spangled Man_ song, I mean. That was a big hit with a lot of folks, sold a lot of Series E war bonds.’

Lockwood grins. ‘Yes, that was one of our better efforts I think, given the rush job they put on us getting it done.’ He takes a breath. ‘ _Who’s strong and brave, here to save the American Way?’_ he sings, low.

Brown leans in, mugging a performer’s smile, doing a marching motion with his arms even as he delivers Steve’s drink _: ‘Who vows to fight like a man for what’s right, night and day?’_

And Selden rounds them up: _‘Who will campaign door to door for America, carry the flag shore to shore for America, from Hoboken to Spokane?’_

And then, as if on cue, all together, their arms out wide like it’s the end of a Busby Berkley number: _‘The Star Spangled Man with a Plan!’_

Agent Carter and Bucky applaud as the three performers fall about laughing. Brown and Lockwood, squashed together once more on the packing crate, are holding each other upright for a moment, and Selden reaches out to steady them, grabbing one or other of them by the thigh – Steve can’t quite tell.

‘And I want to say on behalf of all the men here,’ Steve continues firmly, ‘what a great performance that was you did this afternoon.’

‘I sense a ‘but’ coming,’ Lockwood says, and raises his eyebrow.

‘But,’ Steve continues, as calmly as he can. ‘But I need to be clear that I’m done with all that. No more shows for me.’ He looks between them, worried.

Selden laughs again. ‘Don, what on Earth did you write in that letter? The poor boy is terrified!’

‘I’m sorry if I did put you off, Captain Rogers,’ Lockwood says now, and sets his glass down. ‘The fact is, our new project isn’t for you, it’s about you.’

Brown nods. ‘How would you feel about being a musical?’

‘Musical?’ Steve repeats, conscious of Bucky chuckling next to him. Agent Carter by contrast has stiffened.

‘Yeah, a musical.’ Lockwood learns in a little. ‘Now, I don’t suppose I need to tell any of you about the power of a story. But there is power in a story, and for the best stories there’s usually a bunch of ways to tell them. We all read your autobiography, Captain Rogers, when it was serialised in Picture Post, we’re not planning on cracking open any state secrets.’

‘Please, call me Steve. And I didn’t write that. I didn’t even see it till it was printed.’

‘Well, true or not it was a good tale.’ Lockwood raises his hands as if he can already show them the poster: ‘Scrawny kid from New York grows up and saves America.’

‘And the beauty of it is,’ Brown begins, ‘is that the songs almost write themselves, and you got so many settings. Brooklyn – the ballet of the tenement. Little kids hawking papers, the streets of New York through twenty-four hours, maybe a cute dog – did you ever have a dog?’

Steve bites his lip, shakes his head, and Brown carries on.

‘Then the World’s Fair where you met Erskine! Lights! Dance! We’ve got a whole number planned with a bunch of army recruiting doctors tapping out tunes with their tendon hammers. Then we can use the material we wrote for you already for the promotional stuff – that gets in the patriotic angle too, which all the backers love right now. Then to London – men in bowler hats, the old Buck Palace angle, guys in red and the bearskins, the Lambeth Walk. And then we’ve got this unit you’re in now – the Screamers?’

‘Howling Commandos.’

‘And we’re thinking twelve guys, that’s the perfect number for real routines, modern stuff, synchronised, athletic.’

Selden reaches over and touches Steve’s knee gently. ‘You hate it, don’t you?’ she says, not unkindly. ‘I can see it in your face.’

Steve swallows, hard. ‘I want to do what I can to keep morale up, support the war effort – I know the shows before did a lot of good, raised a lot of money. But this is… Does it have to be about me?’

‘It can be good, you know,’ Lockwood says now, sitting back. ‘Having the world think they know you inside and out. It can be bad, but it can be good, too. If the public version is a little… smoothed over, the private version can be a little more free.’

Steve stares at him. But there’s no angle in Lockwood’s eyes.

He looks back at Bucky and Agent Carter. ‘What do you guys think?’

They look at each other, and then back at him. He can sense something passing between them, and can only wish he knew what it was.

‘I’ll have to run it by a lot of people,’ Agent Carter says slowly. ‘So it’s not necessarily a go no matter what, but if you don’t want to, I won’t even tell them.’ She turns to Lockwood, Selden and Brown. ‘And none of these people will, either,’ she says firmly.

‘I like you, honey,’ Selden observes, raising a glass. ‘And no, we won’t railroad anyone. That’s not what we’re about.’

‘Buck?’

‘Heck, it’s your life Steve.’

‘It’s your life too. What they’re talking about, it’s you too. Can’t have the story of my life without the story of yours. So do you…’ Steve licks his lips. ‘You’d like to be in a movie, I guess?’

‘I don’t want anything you don’t want,’ Bucky tells him earnestly. ‘It’d be no kick at all if you were uncomfortable about it. And besides, after all this is over, maybe I wanna be a movie star on my own terms, huh? Sniping’s good and all but it’s not exactly a peacetime profession.’

Steve turns back to their three hosts. Looks from face to smiling face. ‘Can I talk to you again later?’ he asks them.

‘Sure, son,’ Lockwood says gently, and the other two nod.

‘Now we’ve got some cookies with us somewhere, you must take some of those, and the lemons too,’ Selden says, rising, and soon they’re all bustling again through the small space.

-

‘Well that settles it,’ Steve says, coming back from the command tent with the weather report still in his hand – the report itself rapidly becoming soggy with the rain. He’s already passed with the news through the mess where the rest of the Howlies are gathered, playing cards and arguing affectionately as is their habit. ‘No flights tonight, and not for twenty-four hours, this low pressure’s stuck over us now.’

In the entrance to the Howling Commando unit tactical and supply tent, Bucky and Agent Carter turn to look at him. They were talking about something, Steve realises, and he’s interrupted them. He halts up, wondering if he should apologise, fighting down something far less charitable.

‘If it’s going to be that long, I could drive us somewhere?’ Agent Carter says. ‘It’s not so far to the nearest town, and conveniently enough I can authorise trips off base.’

‘Whaddya think, Stevie?’ Bucky asks, and Steve realises in the moment – Bucky has never, ever been a good actor – that this is what they’ve been discussing, preparing for his return. ‘How about a real bar, huh? Something with a proper roof, somewhere for dancing? I hear there’s a place already back up and running not two hours from here.’

Steve bites his lip. ‘Three’s an awkward number for a dancefloor,’ he tries, because he’s not going to act like he’s stupid, he’s not going to pretend he’s got a headache and leave them to it.

‘Didn’t look like it this afternoon,’ Agent Carter shoots back.

Steve stares at her, and then at Bucky. He wants to squint again, he can’t be… They can’t be…

‘I still gotta talk to the Hollywood people,’ he finds himself saying, grasping at straws, anything to give him a reason to walk away. ‘I still… Sorry, I’ll catch you later maybe.’

-

It’s dusk now, what sun there was fading. The rain has eased off, just a little, although there’s thicker cloud coming. Outside the USO tent, Don Lockwood is visible in the gloaming by the lighted tip of his cigarette.

‘Oh hey, Captain Rogers,’ he says, smiling as Steve approaches. ‘The others are over getting us some dinner, if you want to come back in a while?’

‘I’ll speak now,’ Steve says hurriedly. He has to be able to speak now or else he’ll have to go back and... ‘Anyway you can tell them from me; it’s simple enough. I can’t say I’m comfortable with the idea, not much, but you made me think. People are going to tell my story, whether I let them or not, and I guess I’d rather it was you telling it. I trust you.’

‘You won’t regret it,’ Lockwood says, tone serious, ‘and from the other two as well, thank you. We’ll send you some draft material once we’re back Stateside. Care of SSR I suppose?’

Steve nods.

Don taps out his cigarette and then looks at it as if seeing it for the first time and holds it up. ‘I’m sorry, do these bother you?’

‘Not now,’ Steve assures him, although the smell isn’t exactly great.

‘They bother Cosmo and Kathy,’ Lockwood says ruefully. ‘They always kick me out when I smoke ‘em. Hence taking the chance now, before the heavens re-open.’

‘Don’t you mind?’

Lockwood studies him. ‘Why do you think I’d mind?’

‘She’s your wife,’ Steve says, and winces almost as soon the words leave his mouth. He feels like one of the women who used to gossip on the tenement stairwell about the kids without fathers home, or the priest yelling through Leviticus. There’s clear disappointment in Lockwood’s face. ‘He’s your best pal,’ Steve tries instead, but that still isn’t what he means. ‘Don’t you mind that they… how fond they are of each other?’ he finally blurts out.

‘I guess I might,’ Lockwood says, slowly, ‘if I wasn’t just as fond of both of them.’

A sort of heat runs down the back of Steve’s neck. Even at the last moment, he didn’t think he’d hear it. He didn’t think he’d ever hear anyone just… say something like that. Like it was OK. Like it was just how they were living, and like they were happy.

Lockwood studies the cigarette tip again. ‘You know how I got this habit? In the last war. The war to end all wars, well… I was in the American Expeditionary Force and before you get any ideas, my unit never made it past deployment in England. I was young – too young, but so was Cosmo, and Cosmo joined up so I did too. I just wanted to be with him. I just… needed to be wherever he was. I think you know that feeling.’

Dry mouthed, Steve nods.

‘I think you know what it’s like,’ Lockwood continues softly, ‘to be confused. You like girls, you know you like girls but there’s guys too and this one guy in particular and you… You think “OK, that’s OK, he’s never gonna feel this way, but that’s OK, because we’re pals and we’re gonna be pals forever, who needs anything else?” And then the girl comes along. _The_ girl, like a movie. And you’ve heard about this too, that moment you grow out of the feelings that were wrong, except the thing is you don’t. You still love him. Now you love her too. So what the hell happens?’

Steve’s heart is going to beat clear out of his chest. ‘What happens?’ he asks. ‘What happened?’

Lockwood grins, staring into the middle distance. The smile on his face is quite beautiful. ‘For us it was Kathy. She saw through me from the moment we met. And she saw Cosmo. People could miss him, you know? Because he wasn’t the famous one? But she saw him, she saw how wonderful he was. She got him dancing again. Got us both dancing. All of us, together.’ He laughs a little, straightens up. ‘There was one night, one morning, two in the morning and she and Cosmo were making sandwiches, and I came into the kitchen and I saw them and I thought: This is my happy ending. This is what I want for my life when the end credits roll.’

‘But how… how did you know that they…’

Lockwood smiles. ‘Some bits of the life story are private, Captain Rogers. You know that too.’ He looks up. ‘And I tell you what, Carter and Barnes? They are never going to tell you to do this. My sweethearts know I’m a dope and they tell me so. Carter and Barnes, they adore you. It’s easy to tell – hey, don’t worry, not that easy. You have to know to look, and I do. You could see today when we offered you that deal, they’ll never push you into what you don’t want. Or might not want.’ He takes one final drag and drops the butt, mashing it under his heel. ‘So if you do want it, my words of wisdom would be to go tell them so.’

‘I… thank you, and I…’

‘Go on! Go!’ Lockwood laughs. Behind him, Selden and Brown are coming back, Brown with two plates to Selden’s one, trudging over the mud together.

‘I…’ Steve looks over at them as they cry out a greeting to him as well as Lockwood.

‘I’ll explain. They’ll understand.’ Lockwood smiles gently. ‘Get going.’

Steve gives a kind of half-salute and dashes, only turning once to take one more look at the way the three of them smile at each other in greeting, and fairly runs back through the camp.

He’s half-terrified that when he reaches their side, it will all seem ridiculous again. Some bizarre delusion of his own mind.

‘Bucky,’ he says, coming into the tactical tent. ‘Peggy.’ He takes a deep breath, looks from one to the other. ‘Dancing sounds swell.’

He reaches out, and, shaking, takes both their hands into his own.

When he sees the way they look at each other, and then at him, even as they join their hands too and complete the circle, he suddenly feels like he could sing.

**Author's Note:**

> And then AU AU, no one dies or gets frozen and it's all OT3 ever after, or possibly EVERYONE gets frozen anyway there's no angst and it's very queer, because this is fanfic and we can :D


End file.
